What Sonia Sotomayor Has Planned for Denver

The Senate is anticipated to vote later this week on whether to confirm U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan. She’s expected to receive the nod for placement on the U.S. Supreme Court by a slightly narrower margin than Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s 68-31 tally last year, points out The New York Times.

Sotomayor will visit Colorado later this month, speaking to high school, college, and law students in Denver on August 26 and then attending the 10th Circuit Judicial Conference in Colorado Springs, reports the Denver Business Journal.

Advertisement

Sotomayor has been invited to speak by DU’s law school and the Colorado Campaign for Inclusive Excellence, a local organization that promotes diversity in the legal community.

“It is so exciting that she accepted our invitation to speak with young people in the Denver community, who will be inspired to follow her lead–to go to college and law school and become attorneys and judges one day,” says Kathleen Nalty, CCIE’s executive director.

Perhaps someone in Colorado will ask the court’s first Latina justice what she thinks of the Boy Scouts, who openly discriminate against gays, receiving discounted rates on public school facilities in Boulder, where the ACLU is challenging the perks (via the Daily Camera).

Sotomayor recently weighed in on another issue, expressing disappointment with a Supreme Court ruling that weakens Miranda rights, reports The Christian Science Monitor. “Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent–which counter intuitively requires them to speak,” she says.

Advertisement

“At the same time, suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so.”